Bug#893324: diffoscope: mechanism to ignore changes to file modification dates

[Paul Wise]

Package: diffoscope
Version: 91
Severity: wishlist

When I am sponsoring packages I sometimes use diffoscope to compare
source packages. Often a lot of timestamps have changed but I don't
really care about timestamp changes when sponsoring packages, so it
would be nice to have a way to ignore the modification timestamp.
Here is an example of what I am seeing:

│ │ │   --- streamlink-0.10.0+dfsg/debian/source/format
│ │ ├── +++ streamlink-0.11.0+dfsg/debian/source/format
│ │ │ ├── stat {}
│ │ │ │ @@ -1,8 +1,8 @@
│ │ │ │  
│ │ │ │    Size: 12        	Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file
│ │ │ │  Links: 1
│ │ │ │  Access: (0640/-rw-r-----)  Uid: ( 1000/    pabs)   Gid: ( 1000/    pabs)
│ │ │ │  
│ │ │ │ -Modify: 2018-01-23 22:55:45.000000000 +0000
│ │ │ │ +Modify: 2018-03-08 23:12:49.000000000 +0000
│ │ │ │  
│ │ │ │   Birth: -

-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers testing-debug
  APT policy: (900, 'testing-debug'), (900, 'testing'), (800, 'unstable-debug'), (800, 'unstable'), (790, 'buildd-unstable'), (700, 'experimental-debug'), (700, 'experimental'), (690, 'buildd-experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.14.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_AU.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_AU.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages diffoscope depends on:
ii  python3                3.6.4-1
ii  python3-distro         1.0.1-2
ii  python3-libarchive-c   2.1-3.1
ii  python3-magic          2:0.4.15-1
ii  python3-pkg-resources  38.4.0-1

Versions of packages diffoscope recommends:
ii  abootimg                         0.6-1+b2
ii  acl                              2.2.52-3+b1
ii  apktool                          2.3.1+dfsg-1
ii  binutils-multiarch               2.30-7
ii  bzip2                            1.0.6-8.1
ii  caca-utils                       0.99.beta19-2+b2
ii  colord                           1.3.3-2
ii  db-util                          5.3.1
ii  default-jdk [java-sdk]           2:1.8-59
ii  default-jdk-headless             2:1.8-59
pn  device-tree-compiler             <none>
pn  docx2txt                         <none>
ii  e2fsprogs                        1.43.9-2
ii  enjarify                         1:1.0.3-3
ii  fontforge-extras                 0.3-4
pn  fp-utils                         <none>
ii  genisoimage                      9:1.1.11-3+b2
ii  gettext                          0.19.8.1-4
ii  ghc                              8.0.2-11
ii  ghostscript                      9.22~dfsg-2
ii  giflib-tools                     5.1.4-2
ii  gnupg                            2.2.5-1
ii  imagemagick                      8:6.9.9.34+dfsg-3
ii  imagemagick-6.q16 [imagemagick]  8:6.9.9.34+dfsg-3
ii  jsbeautifier                     1.6.4-6
pn  libarchive-tools                 <none>
ii  llvm                             1:4.0-40
pn  mono-utils                       <none>
pn  odt2txt                          <none>
pn  oggvideotools                    <none>
ii  openjdk-8-jdk [java-sdk]         8u151-b12-1
ii  openssh-client                   1:7.6p1-4
ii  pdftk                            2.02-4+b2
ii  pgpdump                          0.31-0.2
ii  poppler-utils                    0.61.1-2
pn  procyon-decompiler               <none>
ii  python3-argcomplete              1.8.1-1
ii  python3-binwalk                  2.1.1-16
ii  python3-debian                   0.1.32
pn  python3-defusedxml               <none>
pn  python3-guestfs                  <none>
ii  python3-jsondiff                 1.1.1-1
ii  python3-progressbar              2.3-4
ii  python3-pyxattr                  0.6.0-2+b1
ii  python3-rpm                      4.14.0+dfsg1-2
ii  python3-tlsh                     3.4.4+20151206-1+b3
pn  r-base-core                      <none>
ii  rpm2cpio                         4.14.0+dfsg1-2
ii  sng                              1.1.0-1+b1
ii  sqlite3                          3.22.0-1
ii  squashfs-tools                   1:4.3-4
ii  tcpdump                          4.9.2-2
ii  unzip                            6.0-21
ii  vim-common                       2:8.0.1453-1
pn  xmlutils                         <none>
ii  xxd                              2:8.0.1453-1+b1
ii  xz-utils                         5.2.2-1.3

Versions of packages diffoscope suggests:
ii  libjs-jquery  3.2.1-1

-- no debconf information

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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